I read on the net today about an applique technique where you sew a piece of light thin fabric on the right side of your shape and sew completely around it, clip the corners or round edges, split the thin material, turn it inside out, press and then applique. What a great idea. Does anyone do this? Is it a common way to applique? It sounds like the way to get perfect shapes.

I've done it with interfacing. Eleanor Burns does it that way on Quilt in a Day. If you go to http://www.quiltinaday.com/ she has free videos. Some of them show her applique method.

I"m not much of an appliqu-er, but I use this method when I do...even for machine finishing the applique. As you said, it makes neat edges with, for me, less trouble than needle turn, and fewer burnt fingers than turning and pressing! If you want to, you can use fusible interfacing (fabric with glue on one side) as the light weight fabric..put the glue side toward the right side of the fabric when stitching, and when turned right side out, you can fuse the applique to the base fabric so it won't slide when you're stitching it down, and you don't need loads of pins! Also, if you want an applique with some extra oomph on top of the base fabric, you can also add a layer of batting to the applique sandwich! All sorts of options!

you can also use "used" dryer sheets for this. Just press them out and they are ready to go. They make your quilt smell nicee too :)

You can use dryer sheets (used ones) that way, too.

Shibori, I was a milisecond slower than you!

I'm applique impaired. It scares me to do more than just a little stem or whatever. But I did try this method for a butterfly. It was so cute that I never got around to sewing it to a project. He hangs on my curtain!

by the way, Reverse applique is a completely different technique where two layers of fabric are stitched together with a planned design (right sides up for both fabrics!)...then the top fabric is cut away from certain parts of the design and what's left of the top fabric is needle turned and hand stitched to let the back fabric show through in the desired pattern. A good example of this technique is the mola designs from certain people in South AMerica and Asia. Here's one link to the mola style...
http://www.galenfrysinger.com/mola_panama.htm

You can take pelon or used dryer sheets, trace your pattern
onto the pelon, tack the pattern to the back of your quilt block, lay your 1st fabric right side up on the front of the block, now from the back side saten stich on the pattern,then you turn your block over and cut away excess
fabric close to your stiching. Now place next color of fabric on the right side of quilt block and turn it over
and saten stich on the pattern, do you see where I'm going with this. Another nice thing about appliqueing this way you only have to change your bobbin thread and not the top thread.
GG

Sorry, I just do needle turn. I guess I'm lazy, but I don't like adding extra steps to anything unless I absolutely have to. :-D

That is the way I do it if the pieces are small. If you want to pad the design, it's easy to do with this method...

Ditter